Withey, Alun. "The dominion of the beard, c. 1850–1900." Concerning Beards: Facial Hair, Health and Practice in England, 1650–1900. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 55–78. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 24 Sep. 2021. .

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Th e dominion of the beard, c. 1850–1900

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, but for a relatively limited metropolitan fashion for side whiskers, facial hair remained generally unpopular in Britain. 1 In 1834, the Toilette of Health, Beauty and Fashion extolled the virtues of a clean shave, citing the beard as a mark of the plebeian. ‘An unshorn chin,’ it argued, ‘has a degenerating aspect and is only, if at all, excusable in the lowest labourer and mechanic for the infrequency of its removal.’ 2 Shaving was still regarded as a manly act. Th e patience and skill required, along with the endurance of discomfort, built character, putting a gentleman in ‘a frame of mind favourable to his moral improvement’. 3 Around 1850, however, a changing climate of ideas emerged around male identity, bodily appearance and, in particular, the physicality of the male body. Manliness and authority became allied with, and defi ned by, physical characteristics such as fi tness and vigour, as well as corporeal male form, shape and appearance. In an eff ort to provide compelling evidence through which to reassert the ‘natural’ authority of men, the body became ‘the ultimate foundation of masculine authority and autonomy’ and a benchmark by which to measure the manliness and character of individual men. 4 Bodily fi tness was analogous with fi tness to rule. 5 Th e new Victorian man was physically robust, ready for action and also fi t to lead if required. He was personifi ed in the belligerent, martial bodies of fi ghting men, in the rugged, hardy physiques of new heroes, including mountaineers, explorers and hunters and in the ‘muscular Christianity’ advocated by religious writers such as Charles Kingsley. 6 Th e physical strength of the male body was claimed as mandatory evidence of men’s ‘natural’ superiority and authority. As greater attention began to be paid to the attributes and physicality of the male body, so individual bodily features also acquired new prominence. As perhaps the most

1 An article on this nascent ‘whiskers movement’ is currently in preparation. 2 A n o n . , Th e Toilette of Health, Beauty and Fashion, Embracing the Economy of the Beard &c ( Boston : Allen and Ticknor , 1834 ), 160 . 3 R o b e r t S o u t h e y , Th e Doctor &C ( London : Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans , 1838 ), 204 . 4 C h r i s t o p h e r O l d s t o n e - M o o r e , ‘ Th e Beard Movement in Victorian Britain ’, Victorian Studies , 48 : 1 ( 2005 ): 9 . 5 Jacob Middelton , ‘ Th e Beard and Victorian Ideas of Masculinity’, in Dominic Janes (ed.), Back to the Future of the Body ( Newcastle : Cambridge Scholars , 2007 ), 34 . 6 Oldstone-Moore, ‘Beard Movement’, 13, 15–20; Susan Walton , ‘ From Squalid Impropriety to Manly Respectability: Th e Revival of Beards, Moustaches and Martial Values in the 1850s in England ’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts , 30 : 3 ( 2008 ): 235 .

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56 Concerning Beards

visible and public symbol of the male body, facial hair – and particularly the beard – returned to prominence as a key signifi er of masculine traits such as manly strength and character. Th is chapter explores the place of facial hair in defi ning gender (and in particular masculinity), class and race in the nineteenth century. First, it charts the relationship between beards and shift ing concepts of masculinity aft er 1850. Second, it charts the place of beards within health and medical debates, including the emerging popular practice of physiognomy and the specifi c technological context through which arguments made in support of beards should be understood. Th e fi nal part of the chapter then turns to broader questions about facial hair as a component in the construction of a specifi cally British manliness and, to some extent, national superiority, in the age of Empire. Overall it argues that commentators deployed facial hair in popular (and some medical) writing in a variety of contexts in the nineteenth century, including navigating the complex challenges and changes wrought by modernity, industrial and urban life; shift s in medical and scientifi c understanding and new technologies; and also in attempting to demonstrate British national character and Imperial endeavour.

Facial hair and masculinity

In some respects, facial hair might seem an unlikely symbol for veneration. In an era that privileged control, a long beard might easily convey loss of control over the body implying, as in the previous century, that a man had neglected attention towards his appearance. Further unfl attering connections of the bearded face with political radicalism, together with fact that beard-wearing was open to all classes, had the potential to render facial hair as undesirable. But as early as the 1830s there were calls for the return of the beard, based on both its physical and symbolic masculine power. In 1838 the Penny Satirist extolled its virtues, claiming that shaving ‘destroys the manhood’, made men weak and eff eminate and threatened to ‘womanize the whole species’. 7 Alongside an increasing awareness of the gendered signifi cance of the beard, many factors coalesced to provide a febrile environment for the return of beards. One was simply a reaction against decades of beardlessness. Men born in 1820 were likely the third or even fourth generation living in a beardless age. Like other fashion trends, such as wigs, what began as a marker of civility and gentlemanliness had gradually shed its symbolic power through ubiquity. In the eighteenth century, being clean- shaven had evinced polite manliness. But aft er 1800, young men were beginning to seek their own fashionable alternatives. Historians have located the return of facial hair within a number of deeper changes in, and challenges to, masculinity and manliness. As John Tosh has argued, the period between 1800 and 1914 in Britain brought increasingly sharp distinctions between

7 Anon. , ‘ A Chapter on Shaving ’, Penny Satirist (15 September 1838 ): 19–20 .

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Th e Dominion of the Beard 57

categories of gender and sexuality. Rapid industrial and economic change created new circumstances for men, in turn forcing the remodelling of concepts of masculinity, the construction of manliness and the male body. 8 First were the physical and emotional challenges of adapting to a newly industrializing society. As well as having to navigate changing hierarchical structures and new working environments, men were under pressure to ‘produce’. Th is, in itself, was not new, since men had always been regarded as providers for families. 9 In the nineteenth century, however, these longstanding ideas were reshaped as a drive for working men to be given a wage that would support an entire family, thereby removing the need for a wife to contribute to the domestic economy. An increasing focus upon, and valorization of, work further emphasized men’s role as breadwinners in the household. 10 Second were shift ing concepts of patriarchal authority and its exercise both in the workplace and the home. 11 As the domestic sphere became more important, and since women traditionally controlled the household economy, male behaviour and self-presentation focused upon their supposed authority over home and hearth. 12 Th ird was the increasing polarization of male and female bodies, with emphases upon the sexual ‘otherness’ and bodily diff erence of women and the privileging of gender-specifi c bodily characteristics. Fears about bodily and sexual ‘diff erence’ also manifested in attitudes towards eff eminacy and homosexuality, reinforced by perceptions of the physical and moral laxity of the male population in the mid-century. 13 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the period aft er 1840 saw a new focus upon soldiers as exemplars of ideal masculine characteristics. Th e constraints of home and workplace acted to confi ne large numbers of Victorian men inside for long periods of time. Th is created tensions between the romanticized vision of manliness, emphasizing the fi tness of male bodies for a life immersed in wild nature and harsh elements, versus the dull reality of a sedentary existence spent indoors. As Susan Walton has suggested, the late 1840s saw a remaking of the symbolism of military facial hair. Whereas British men had once avoided moustaches because of their supposed links to countries operating compulsory military service, the moustache now became a symbol of manly courage and belligerence, linked to military prowess. 14 Th e successes and perceived heroism of (bearded) British soldiers in the Crimean War, further reinforced the beard as an accoutrement of the military ultramale. 15 By cultivating his facial hair, the civilian man, perhaps embarrassed or constrained by his domestic and working life, could remake himself in their martial image. All of these points are compelling, but it could be argued that the fashion for beards perhaps also related to broader and deeper concerns about the impact and eff ects of modernity itself. In Sharona Pearl’s words, ‘As modernity outpaced the words with

8 John Tosh , ‘Masc ulinities in an Industrializing Society: 1800–1914 ’, Journal of British Studies , 44 : 2 ( 2005 ): 330–1 . 9 S e e , f o r e x a m p l e , J o a n n e B a i l e y , Parenting in England, 1760–1830: Emotion, Identity and Generation ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2012 ), 67 . 10 Ibid., 334. 11 Tosh, ‘Masculinities’, 332; Oldstone-Moore, ‘Th e Beard Movement’, 9. 12 Tosh, ‘Masculinities’, 332–3. 13 Ibid., 336, 338; Middleton, ‘Th e Beard’, 33; Walton, ‘Squalid Impropriety’, 234. 14 Walton, ‘From Squalid Impropriety’, 233–4. 15 Oldstone-Moore, ‘Beard Movement’, 12.

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58 Concerning Beards

which to express itself, new languages and new modes of representation emerged’, including the privileging of image and the visual over language and description. In other words, it was oft en easier to show than to tell. 16 Obliquely this has utility for our understanding of the signifi cance of facial hair. Th e beard aft er all was, and long had been, a visual statement as well as a metaphor or synecdoche for male strength. In the early modern period and at various other points in history, it had evinced physicality and belligerence, sexual and reproductive prowess and also mental acuity. It therefore harked back to a supposed golden age of patriarchy. Sensing the shift ing sands of modernity, it is possible that men began to see the beard as a cultural touchstone – a symbol of some older, traditional and perhaps imagined manliness in an increasingly anonymous modern world. Th is would certainly be consistent, for example, with the motivations underlying the medieval or Gothic revival, evident in the art, architecture and literature of the period, which could itself be seen as a reaction against modernity and fears about industrialization and urbanization. Whatever the direct motivations, around 1850, aft er a brief initial trend for moustaches, the fashion for full beards gathered momentum. Initial press coverage of this new ‘beard movement’ was mixed, ranging from bemusement to open hostility. In 1851 ‘Aguila’, a contributor to Th e Leader, reported having been laughed and hissed at by passers-by while walking in London, attacked with stones and called ‘a beast’ and ‘French dog’. 17 Such brickbats stung all the more since ‘Aguila’ was in fact a retired soldier and had seen action against the French. Th e insult is particularly telling, highlighting lingering and pejorative associations between the beard and French Napoleonic troops. Aguila noted that his antagonists were not only ‘common people and boys’ but also ‘well-dressed ladies and shopkeepers’ clerks’. 18 Satirical magazines such as Punch were also initially unconvinced as to the merits of the beard. In 1854, as the fashion was in its rapid ascendancy, the magazine poked fun at beard supporters. It concluded that, in the last analysis, it was a matter for any ‘perfectly independent’ individual to ‘please other people or one’s self’, rather than be a slave to fashion, or in thrall to confusing and contradictory arguments as to the ‘natural’ function and meaning of the beard. 1 9 By the mid-1850s, however, newspaper and journal articles unanimously lauded the beard, encouraging doubtful men to cast aside their razors. Endorsements for the beard took a number of forms. One was an appeal to its timeless and ‘natural’ place as a manly accoutrement, oft en invoking its venerated status in past civilizations. Writing in the Crayon in 1855, for example, H. W. noted the importance of the beard in successful civilizations from Ancient Greece to the ‘Mahometans’, to demonstrate the nobility and symbolic power of facial hair and the dishonour brought about by shaving.20 ‘Artium Magister’ viewed shaving as a primary cause of the decline of the

16 S h a r o n a P e a r l , About Faces: Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain ( Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 2010 ), 14–15 . 17 Aguila , ‘ Are Moustaches and Beards Prejudicial to Th eir Wearers? ’, Leader (19 April 1851 ): 375 . 18 Ibid. 19 Anon. , ‘Reason and the Razor’, Punch (11 February 1854 ): 60 . 20 H. W., ‘ Beards and Th eir Bearers ’, Crayon , 1 : 24 ( 1855 ): 377–8 .

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Th e Dominion of the Beard 59

Roman Empire, by rendering its fi ghting men eff eminate.21 Others lauded the beard as a symbol of man’s journey through life and acquisition of experience. As a man aged, it merely emphasized his venerable, patriarchal appearance. If beards represented life stage, they were also said to contribute to the aesthetic symmetry of the male form – a longstanding corporeal measure of manly beauty and attractiveness. 2 2 When a man’s ‘physical system [was] perfectly developed [with] capacious chest and stalwart frame’ only a beard could ‘harmonize with this vigorous outline’. 2 3 Th e beard, then, and its proportions, perfectly aligned with new ideals of the male body. Th e bigger the body, and therefore the bigger the beard, the better. Amidst such evidence the return of beards was therefore presented as virtually inevitable. Once right-thinking men considered the evidence, it was assumed, beards would become a fait accompli. In 1853, the Daily News quoted a commercial traveller who was persuaded by the arguments to grow a beard. While friends initially remarked upon the ‘roughness’ of his appearance, aft er a few days ‘almost all thinking men approved’ and were inspired to follow his example.24 Th e new status of the beard even extended to art and literature. Pre-Raphaelite artists including Millais and Holman Hunt deployed bearded fi gures in their historical studies, stressing its place within a ‘historic and unquestionable manliness’. 25 Th e likes of Th omas Carlyle and Charles Kingsley consciously linked beards to positive characteristics like wisdom, strength and a primal manliness. 2 6 Of all claims made in support of beards, however, those relating to its supposed health benefi ts were perhaps the most numerous and enduring. 27 While some attention has located health claims within broader themes of masculinity, less has been said about the place of beards, or indeed hair, within the broader aegis of nineteenth-century medical ideas. As will be shown, as much as it articulated masculine ideas, the beard also complicated them. Arguments about the potential healthiness of facial hair off ered a rational justifi cation for new ideological notions about manliness. 28 But the debates taking place across popular magazines and journals in the mid-Victorian period, obscure important questions about concepts and attitudes towards hair in medical thinking. How far, for example, did health claims made about facial hair refl ect the view of physicians, or the medical profession as a whole? Where and how did beards fi t with new and emerging theories about the face and head, such as physiognomy? It is to such questions that this chapter now turns.

21 A r t i u m M a g i s t e r , An Apology for the Beard Addressed to Men in General, to the Clergy in Particular (London : Rivingtons , 1862 ), 11 . 22 J o a n n e B e g i a t o , Manliness in Britain, 1760–1900: Bodies, Emotion and Material Culture ( Manchester : Manchester University Press , 2020 ), 38 . 23 A n o n . , ‘ Th e Beard ’, Living Age , 42 ( 1854 ): 313–14 . 24 A n o n . , ‘ Th ree Months’ Experience of a Beard ’, Daily News (29 November 1853 ): 3 . 25 Ibid., 13. 26 Ibid., 14. 27 Oldstone-Moore, ‘Th e Beard Movement’, 20–2; Middelton, ‘Th e Beard’, 31–3. 28 Middelton, ‘Th e Beard’, 30.

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60 Concerning Beards

H e a l t h y b e a r d s

As Chapter 2 discussed, the early modern period had seen facial hair closely bound with humoral ideas about individual constitution and temperament, with its colour, thickness and quality all acting as markers of internal heat and, by extension, male generative power. Th e early modern beard, therefore, was a key corporeal marker of manliness. During the eighteenth century, as the previous chapter showed, such discussions were increasingly pushed to the margins amidst redefi nitions of the corporeal body and physiology. Even aft er 1800 older connections between facial hair and bodily constitution still lingered. Some medical texts still referred to temperaments and used the colour and quality of hair and beards as evidence for individual constitution. 29 Th ere also remained a strong emphasis upon the beard, and upon men’s hair more generally, as particular symbols of masculine strength. In 1815, the French physiologist Anthelme Richerand’s Physiological Dictionary argued that male hairiness was a key indicator of the ‘natural vigour and strength’ of the sex. 30 Connections between the beardless face and physical and sexual enervation also still remained in medical writings. At the very least a lack of beard suggested delicacy, along with a feminine physical (and moral) constitution. 31 At worst it suggested the complete lack of sexual desire and ‘want of erection’. 32 As with earlier periods, however, the key determining factor was still the ability to grow a beard. Some medical practitioners were actively hostile towards the beard. In 1831 the American physician and exercise advocate Edward Hitchcock linked facial hair to poor hygiene and cleanliness, arguing that a man might have the strongest mind or fi nest wit, but appearing in ‘good society’ with a long beard or uncombed hair would render him a ‘disgusting object’ to those assembled. 33 According to Hitchcock, removing the beard had health benefi ts, including relief from fi ts of dyspepsia and nervous depression, although this perhaps refl ected more on his personal views than any specifi c medical theory. 34 Other non-medical authors alternatively sought to claim health benefi ts to beard-wearing. Anticipating claims relating to the utility of beards in urban environments, Sylvester Graham (the American Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer) described shaving as a specifi c ‘evil’ resulting from urban life. While still providing instructions to render the process of shaving more comfortable he asserted, with shades of the Biblical Sampson, that ‘the habitual shaving of the beard diminish[ed] the physiological powers of man’ and shortened his life. 35 In general, however, the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century saw a marked decline in discussions of facial hair in medical publications. Despite a raft of texts exploring

29 F o r e x a m p l e , M a r s h a l l H a l l , Diagnosis in Four Parts ( London : Longman et al. , 1817 ), 26 . 30 A n t h e l m e R i c h e r a n d , Elements of Physiology ( London : Printed for Th omas Underwood , 1815 ), 289 . 31 M i c h a e l R y a n , Th e Philosophy of Marriage (London : H. Baillierre, 1839 ), 316 . 32 Ibid., 321. See also Robley Dungison , Human Physiology, Volume 2 ( Philadelphia : Carey, Lea and Blanchard , 1836 ), 442 . 33 E d w a r d H i t c h c o c k , Dyspepsy Forestalled and Resisted or Lectures on Diet, Regimen and Employment ( Amherst : J. & C. Adams , 1831 ), 240 . 34 Ibid., 241. 35 S y l v e s t e r G r a h a m , Lectures on the Science of Human Life ( London : Horsell , 1849 ), 289 .

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the components and functions of the body, medical authors barely commented on the beard beyond stating its appearance at puberty, or any medical conditions pertaining to, or aff ecting it. Studies of diseases of the skin frequently noted medical conditions that could lead to its loss or degradation, ranging from Mentagra, a skin condition aff ecting the chin, to sycosis, an infl ammation of the hair follicles, which matted the beard and could render shaving impossible. 36 Here the beard was a site of disease rather than a physiological component that could promote or protect health. Where facial hair was discussed it was generally subsumed within broader debates about the physical construction of hair. It is clear too that the longstanding links between beards and bodily heat or virility had largely been severed. Some, like Charles Lee, saw hair as part of the ‘cellular membrane’ of the body – a kind of gelatinous material, from which all solid parts were constructed. 37 Rather than being generated from within the body, hair was now commonly understood as a substance that grew upon it or originated just underneath the skin’s surface. It was seen to consist of a bulb, from which nourishment was drawn to the hair, and a horny outer sheath, which extruded from the body. 38 Occasionally the physiology of beard hair and its place within the skin merited specifi c attention. Henry Hollingsworth Smith’s Anatomical Atlas contained detailed plates of an individual beard hair and a cross-section of beard hairs growing in the skin, together with the surrounding tissue and veins. 39 Th e early 1850s, however, brought marked change. With the emergence of the ‘beard movement’ came an outpouring of literature extolling the potential health virtues of facial hair, restoring it to a central position within debates about the healthy male body. Such debates were not new; but the arena in which they occurred, and the manner in which such claims were made, certainly was. Rather than taking place in medical journals and among practitioners, medicalized discussions of the beard were now usually conducted in public and by popular authors in newspapers and journals. Indeed, as will be shown, arguments for the supposed health benefi ts of facial hair did not even necessarily come from the medical profession at all: some were appropriated or imported from other sources, while others were virtually fabricated. Th e appropriation of health debates about facial hair by lay authors has implications for our understanding of the nature, use and authority of medical evidence in popular debates about the supposed superiority of the male body and of the deployment of individual characteristics in ‘proving’ it. Arguments made in support of beard-wearing usually adopted two approaches. First was a sustained attack on the supposed dangers of shaving. Aft er 1850, removing the beard was increasingly depicted as a risky act, almost certainly leading to a rapid decline into ill health. Shaving supposedly weakened the body by removing vital

36 For example, see Samuel Plumbe , Diseases of the Skin, Arranged with a View to Th eir Constitutional Causes ( Philadelphia, PA : Haswell, Barrington and Haswell , 1838 ), 45 , 65 , 233 ; Jonathan Green , A Practical Compendium of the Diseases of the Skin (London : Wittaker , 1837 ), 168–71 , 234 . 37 Charles Lee , Human Physiology for the Use of Elementary Schools ( New York : American Common School Union , 1839 ), 27 . 38 Ibid., 36–7. 39 H e n r y S m i t h , An Anatomical Atlas: Illustrative of the Structure of the Human Body ( Philadelphia, PA : Lea and Blanchard , 1849 ), 65–6 .

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62 Concerning Beards

spirit and energy, which ‘destroys and enfeebles those virtues’. 40 Elderly men who had shaved all their lives had eff ectively ‘thrown away … fi ft y feet of beard in fi ft y years’, much to their own detriment. 41 Th ose who abandoned their razors, by contrast, were promised immediate health benefi ts, even including recovery from illness. A friend of the beard-advocate ‘Barbaratus’ was reportedly cured of a pulmonary illness, causing him to spit blood, as soon as he ceased shaving and let his beard grow. 42 Assertions about the dangers of the razor could be entirely plausible: Xerxes’s Folly and Evil of Shaving likened accidental shaving cuts to open doors through which infection could enter the body. 43 But they could also verge on the ludicrous. William Henry Henslowe described shaving as a ‘fatal fashion’, somewhat unaccountably linking the practice to innumerable recent ‘suicides, homicides and murders’, presumably linked to the availability and use of open razors. 44 Even late in the nineteenth century, phrenological and physiological texts continued to support the notion that shaving was inimical to health. Some mooted a symbiotic relationship existing between the heart and chin. A beard guarded the ‘heart and viscera from atmospheric changes’ while also protecting the throats and chests of (particularly elderly) men. 45 To remove it was therefore to render the body susceptible. Th e issue of protection highlights the second key argument made by beard supporters, that facial hair was a natural cordon sanitaire, protecting the face, neck and respiratory system. Such claims rested on the assumption that facial hair must have a natural function or purpose since ‘nature never does anything in vain’ and would not ‘erect a bulwark were her domain unworthy of protection or were there no enemy to invade it’. 46 Facial hair was commonly argued to be nature’s protector – an anterior covering of the face and throat, resisting poor weather and cold, as well as protecting internal organs. Echoing idealized notions of man’s supposed true place among wild nature, the beard represented a universal, multipurpose armour, repelling everything from the scorching heat to the miasmic damp, the Siroccos and Simooms of the deserts, or the chill blasts of the Arctic. It was, as the New American Cyclopaedia argued, nature’s ‘vigilant sentinel around the mouth’. 47 Th e idea of ‘vigilance’ also fed into claims about the utility of the beard as a protectant against pulmonary and respiratory illness, rheumatic affl ictions of the face and upper body. T. S. Gowing’s Philosophy of Beards argued that a beard was the natural protector of the tonsils, throat and larynx. Bearded men, he claimed, seldom suff ered from chronic sore throats, or from rheumatic pains in the face. 48 Others claimed that beards

40 Anon., ‘Chapter on Shaving’. 41 Ibid. 42 Barbaratus, ‘Clerical Beards’, Times (8 January 1861): 10. 43 X e r x e s , Th e Folly and Evil of Shaving (London : Edward Stanford, 1854 ), 5–6 . 44 W i l l i a m H e n r y H e n s l o w e , Beard Shaving and the Common Use of the Razor: An Unnatural, Irrational and Ungodly and Fatal Fashion amongst Christians ( London : William Edward Painter , 1847 ), 7. 45 Lorenzo Fowler , Fowler’s New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology ( L o n d o n : L. N. Fowler , 1895 ), 59 . 46 Anon. , ‘ Arguments for the Beard ’, Ladies’ Cabinet (1 January 1854 ). 47 George Ripley and Charles A. Dana (eds), Th e New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, Volume III ( New York : D. Appleton , 1859 ), 12 . 48 T. S . G o w i n g , Th e Philosophy of Beards (reproduction of 1854 edition) ( London : British Library , 2014 ), 16 –17.

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protected the wearer from ‘cough, stiff neck, sore throat and miserable hoarseness’, or pointed to the utility of facial hair for preventing pulmonary conditions, such as phthisis, or consumption. 49 In these readings the beard was a literal barrier between the inside and outside of the body. Another theory held that beards and moustaches naturally extruded carbon from the body and were therefore a vital form of respiration – one that shaving would interrupt with potentially dangerous consequences. 50 If beards preserved health, they could also convey it. Th e (bearded) Royal Academy artist James Ward regarded them as an outward sign of inner health and vigour, as well as allowing the unconstrained ‘open neck’ that he considered essential to a healthy body. 51 In all respects therefore, facial hair was viewed as a vital component in the maintenance and regulation of bodily health. Th e extent to which popular health claims refl ected actual medical evidence, or arguments made by specifi c physicians, however, is less clear. Both Th omas Gowing and Alexander Rowland (a hairdresser) drew from the physician James Copeland’s Dictionary of Practical Medicine, which stated that beards, once grown, protected against ‘chronic sore throats’. 52 Erasmus Wilson cited Edwin Chadwick’s remarks about the potential fi ltering function of moustaches and beards, along with the prevention of colds, bronchial aff ections and even mumps. 53 Th e portability of news items and the habit of local newspapers of recycling stories from the London press, meant that these and similar claims quickly gained currency and were widely cited in newspapers across the country. 54 As Nancy Tomes has argued in her discussion of the dissemination of germ theory in 1870s America, the popular press were oft en active in disseminating new health ideas, even when the medical profession remained dubious. 55 Although in a diff erent context, it is plausible that a similar process took place regarding the health claims of facial hair, where initial scientifi c arguments, speculation or supposed ‘proofs’ were swift ly incorporated into public consciousness. 56 Th ere were certainly some practitioners prepared to endorse such claims. In 1857 the physician, phrenologist and mesmerist George Holland saw beards as key ‘structural appendages’ of the body, the removal of which was ‘severely prejudicial to

49 D a v i d , Th e Beard: Why Do We Cut It Off ? An Analysis of the Controversy Concerning It and an Outline of Its History ( L o n d o n : Th omas Bosworth, n.d .), 9 ; Edwin Creer , A Popular Treatise on the Human Hair, Its Management, Improvement, Preservation, Restoration, and the Causes of Its Decay ( London : Hunt and Son , 1865 ), 70 . 50 Middelton, ‘Th e Beard’, 32. 51 R o b e r t Wa r d , Defence of the Beard (London : Lion and Unicorn Press, 1954 , reproduction of original, c. 1840), 4–5 . 52 Alexander Rowland , Th e Human Hair Popularly and Physiologically Considered (London : Piper Brothers , 1853 ), 93–4 ; Gowing, Philosophy of Beards , 17. 53 E r a s m u s W i l s o n , Healthy Skin: A Popular Treatise on the Skin and Hair, Th eir Preservation and Management ( Philadelphia, PA : Blanchard and Lee , 1854 ), 108–9 . 54 For just some examples from the many, see Anon. , ‘Th e Beard Movement ’, Leader (10 December 1853 ): 1183 ; ‘A Constant Reader’, ‘Beards and Moustaches’, Daily News (2 December 1853): 4; Anon. , ‘ Sanitary View of the Beard and Moustache ’, Daily News (12 August 1853 ): 2 ; Anon. , ‘Philosophy of Beards ’, Ipswich Mechanics Institution (25 March 1854 ): 2 ; Anon. , ‘Beard and Moustache Movement’, Sheffi eld Independent (24 December 1853 ): 4 . 55 N a n c y To m e s , Th e Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life ( Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 1998 ), 38–9 . 56 Ibid.

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64 Concerning Beards

the healthy condition of organs more or less interested in its development’. 57 In 1862, the prominent royal surgeon W. J. Moore also accepted arguments that the beard was a ‘distinguishing appendage of man’ and a sign of his physical and mental acuity, as well as benefi cial in preventing disease. 58 One of the most detailed medical arguments for the healthiness of beards appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal by A. Mercer- Adams, a former physician to the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infi rmary. Adams noted the variety of ‘hygienic virtues’ attributed to beards, citing evidence from a 1853 study of more than fi ft y men, who were compelled to shave, having previously worn beards for some time. 59 Once parted from their beards, all were supposedly stricken by illness, including neuralgia, rheumatism, abscesses and toothaches. 60 Adams further quoted claims attributed to the manager of the Great Northern Railway, that bearded railwaymen and engineers within the company ‘enjoy[ed] better health than those who shave’. 61 Linking the beard to labour and occupation widened its appeal as a helpmeet and comfort to the working man, but also reveals how facial hair had seemingly transcended the class associations it had carried only a few decades earlier. Rather than a mark of the ‘lowest labourer and mechanic’, as it had been in the 1830s, it no longer suggested class distinction and was now almost a unifying characteristic, common – and useful – for the working-class man and the gentleman alike. 62 As some were quick to point out, however, arguments about the protective qualities of beards overlooked the obvious question of ‘why just men’? As an article in Th e Ladies Repository in 1863 pointed out, women across the world were equally exposed to ‘the clemencies of the seasons’ and, being of a ‘more delicate organization’ arguably needed more protection than men. As to the arguments for the fi ltering properties of facial hair as used in various trades and handicraft s, it hardly seemed reasonable to arm half a race with beards to accommodate a few scissor grinders! 63 Rather than ‘nature’s protector’ or a sign of male strength and superiority, the article suggested, the beard represented little more than a ‘universal toy and plaything’, to occupy the restless hands of men. 64 By the mid-1850s the supposed medical advantages to beard-wearing had become so commonplace in popular publications that they were almost beyond question or further investigation. Instead, unsupported health claims attributed to mysterious acquaintances, anonymous practitioners or even personal experience were simply quoted and perpetuated. Aft er resolving to wear a ‘jolly old beard’, one North British Daily Mail journalist proudly informed his readers that his new beard bestowed a new ‘freedom of breathing’ in the foggy December air and how he suff ered no toothache,

57 G e o r g e H o l l a n d , Th e Constitution of the Animal Creation, As Expressed in Structural Appendages ( London : John Churchill , 1858 ), 71 . 58 W. J . M o o r e , Health in the Tropics or the Sanitary Art Applied to Europeans in India (London : John Churchill, 1862 ), 254 . 59 A. Mercer Adam , ‘ Is Shaving Favourable to Health? A Plea for Beards’ , Edinburgh Medical Journal (December 1861 ): 8–9 . 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 A n o n , Th e Toilette of Health , 160. 63 A n o n . , ‘ B e a r d s ’, Ladies’ Repository , 31 ( 1863 ): 143 . 64 Ibid., 144.

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loss of voice or sore throats despite the ‘most biting blasts that blew’. 65 Others simply sidestepped the inconvenience of providing hard evidence and instead cited unnamed ‘medical gentlemen’, claimed that their arguments were ‘fully proven on good medical authority’, or ‘well known to physicians in England’, and therefore required no substantiation. 66 It seems likely that the wide variety of claims to endorsement by the medical profession actually originated from a limited pool of individuals.

Nature’s respirator

Th e mid-nineteenth century brought new anxieties about air quality in industrial, urban environments and the injurious eff ects of climate, environment and atmosphere upon the body. 67 Whether through foul smells or ‘the incessant dust fl ying in town streets’, a bevy of evils were concealed in the fuggy urban air. Th e putrid and pungent smells emanating from tanneries, soap-makers and various other works, combined with the thick, toxic gases and smoke emitted from factories and domestic chimneys, fi lled the air with particles. 68 Once inside the lungs, dust and smoke were virtually impossible to remove, and such ‘mechanical impurity’ threatened ‘morbid irritation, marked disease and premature death’. 69 For advocates of facial hair, such anxieties off ered a further and handy opportunity to bolster their claims for the supposed utility of beards. It seems no coincidence that, by the 1860s, the supposed health benefi ts of moustaches and beards had widened to include protection of the voice and throat for the clergy and public speakers and a protective shield for workers in dusty environments, cementing in the public mind their important role as a natural fi lter. Anecdotal evidence had been gathered from soldiers in the fi eld as early as the 1830s, about the capacity of moustaches to protect against bronchial infection and consumption, as well as safeguarding the throat, teeth and eyes. In particular, the potential for the removal of facial hair to actually cause illness was cited. 70 ‘Hairy- lipped regiments,’ as one commentator noted, ‘are more free from diseases of the lungs than others.’ 71 Th e evidence and endorsement of the military certainly carried weight, particularly later, given their place as hirsute role models for young British men. But health claims identifying facial hair as a type of ‘respirator’ were actually rooted in earlier debates about pulmonary illness in Britain and accompanying developments in medical technology. Th e use of the term ‘respirator’ even had a specifi c context, in a device patented to regulate the temperature of inspired and exhaled air, with no connection to facial hair. Rather than citing any new medical evidence, beard

65 A n o n . , ‘ Th e Beard Movement ’, Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (5 March 1854 ): 12 . 66 A n o n . , ‘ Th e Beard Movement ’, Leader (10 December 1853 ): 1183 ; Anon. , ‘ Th e Beard’, Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated (January–June 1871 ): 41 ; B., ‘ Th e Beard ’, Crayon , 6 : 3 ( 1859 ): 69 . 67 Oldstone-Moore, ‘Beard Movement’, 21; Middelton, ‘Th e Beard’, 31. 68 A n t h o n y W o h l , Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (London : J. M. Dent, 1983 ), 206–7 . 69 Anon., ‘Why Shave?’, Household Words (26 August 1853): 158. 70 Oldstone-Moore, ‘Beard Movement’, 12–13. 71 Anon., ‘Moustaches’, John Bull (27 March 1847): 202.

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supporters instead simply appropriated the health claims for this new device and applied them wholesale to facial hair. Th e device in question emerged in 1836, made by Julius Jeff reys, former surgeon to the British East India Company and sometime student of the Edinburgh medical school. Th e patent application stated that it was intended for ‘facilitating respiration, to be worn on the face by persons suff ering from coughs, consumption, asthma, and other affl ictions of the chest’. 72 Underlying the invention was the supposed prevalence of ‘pulmonary consumption’ in Britain, which Jeff reys suggested resulted from England’s unpredictable climate and extremes of temperature and also the problems caused by moving from ‘warm apartments into cold air’. 73 Th is combination of coldness and dryness irritated the lungs and caused breathing diffi culties. 74 Crucially, Jeff reys called his invention ‘Th e Respirator’ – seemingly the fi rst instance of the term ever being applied to a specifi c device. Its principle was to capture the heat from an outgoing breath and transfer it to the next incoming breath, thereby regulating the temperature and protecting the lungs from cold air. Th e patent specifi cation made no mention of trapping dust or germs. Th e utility of the device meant that it became extremely popular in the decades following, reported as entering general use and widely available across the country through agents. 75 Before 1850 Jeff rey’s ‘respirator’ virtually became a brand, with his patent preventing appropriation of the name by imitators. Support from medical professionals was equally swift . In early 1837 the Lancet reported that the ‘Respirator’ was introduced to the ‘Westminster Medical Society’, who deemed it ‘ingenious’. 76 As ideas about the potential of an artifi cial barrier against the air gained currency, the term itself began to enter popular consciousness through references in literature, poetry and theatre. In Bram Stoker’s horror novel Th e Jewel of Seven Stars , respirators were worn by characters to ward off the unpleasant smell of mummies. 77 In his paean to spring, the poet Th omas Hood never dreamt of leaving off his respirator before the heat of July. 78 Th e burlesque play ‘George and the Dragon’ performed at the Adelphi Th eatre London in 1845 even contained the dubious couplet ‘Th e freedom of my breathing is getting greater/I do not seem to need a respirator’. 79 Ideas about ‘respirators’ even transferred to the large scale. Public parks became

72 BL, Patent Number 6988, 1836. Julius Jeff reys , Observations upon the Construction and Use of the Respirator ( Birmingham : T. Wright , 1836 ), cover. 73 Ibid., 1. 74 Ibid., 2. 75 ‘Agents for Mr Jeff erys Instrument’, Morning Post (9 March 1838): 1; ‘Th e Patent Respirator’, Bristol Mercury (9 December 1837): 3; Anon., ‘Invisible Respirator’, Stamford Mercury (9 January 1841): 1; ‘Respirator or Safeguard for the Lungs’, Wolverhampton Chronicle (7 December 1842): 1. 76 Anon., ‘New Instrument for Preventing and Relieving Pulmonary Infections’, Lancet , 27: 698. 77 Kate Hebblethwaite (ed.), ‘ Bram Stoker’ , Th e Jewel of Seven Stars ( London : Penguin, 2008 ), 36–8 , 40–1 , 46 , 49 , 50 ; see also Herman Melville , Th e Confi dence Man: His Masquerade ( New York : Dix, Edwards, 1857 ), 118 . 78 Th omas Hood, ‘Spring: A New Version’, https://literature.proquest.com/searchFulltext. do?id=Z300398972&childSectionId=Z300398972&divLevel=3&queryId=3052770864401 &trailId=162C92A8E43&area=poetry&forward=textsFT&queryType=fi ndWork (accessed 15 May 2018). 79 G i l b e r t A b b o t , A . B e c k e t t a n d M a r k L e m o n , St George and the Dragon: A New, Grand Empirical Exposition (London : National Acting Drama Offi ce , 1845 ), 22 .

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regarded as oases of pure air, where wheezing urbanites could escape the dense city smog. 80 Th e park became, in a literal sense, ‘nature’s respirator’. Around the early 1850s, however, advertisements for respirators began to emphasize their potential as barriers to dust and germs, as well as cold. Part of the context for this were perhaps the changing approaches to concepts of infection and ‘surveillance’ and the increasing onus on individuals to take responsibility for their own health habits and behaviours to prevent infection. 81 In this sense, encouraging individuals to use devices such as the respirator could be seen as an active measure in the preservation of both their own and others’ health. In 1854 the Mechanics Magazine reported a proposal by the Edinburgh chemist Dr John Stenhouse to employ a ‘new species of respirator’, fi lled with powdered animal charcoal, to ‘absorb and destroy any miasmata or infectious particles present in the air ’ (emphasis added). 82 Th e device was designed to eff ectively cover the mouth and nose, thereby preventing the inhalation of particles. Military reports also cited the success of respirators in preventing disease. Physicians in the Crimea reported the utility of charcoal respirators in limiting exposure to malaria and fi ltering out the ‘germs of infectious maladies’. 83 Th ere were already signs of makeshift imitations. Turkish soldiers wore woollen clothes wound around their neck and mouth, both to protect from cold and sift out ‘malarious exhalations’. 84 It seems signifi cant that, just as the makers of ‘respirators’ began to stress the fi ltering properties of their devices against disease and particles, supporters of beards began to make precisely the same claims for facial hair. Th e specifi c fi ltering potential of facial hair had occasionally been noted before the ‘beard movement’. In 1842, John Davy’s journal of travel in Constantinople contained a prescient remark about protection from poor air quality. ‘Th e air-passages are in a measure protected by the respirator, and the wearing of the moustache and beard by the men, which has a somewhat similar eff ect.’ 85 Th e contrast made here was that between an artifi cial and a natural respirator. But from the early 1850s, the idea of the beard as ‘nature’s fi lter’ was given full vent. As well as appropriating the supposed health benefi ts, it was at this point that beard supporters and some medical practitioners commandeered the term ‘respirator’. For Erasmus Wilson and Edwin Chadwick, ‘the Mustachio [was] a natural respirator defending the lungs against the inhalation of dust and cold’ as well as a protector against heat. 86 Wilson noted the utility of the moustache in both hot and cold climes and also in dusty trades, as well as warning of the medical conditions that could be brought on by shaving it off . 87 Mercer-Adam,

80 W o h l , Endangered Lives , 210. 81 S e e G r a h a m M o o n e y , Intrusive Interventions: Public Health, Domestic Space and Infectious Disease Surveillance in England, 1840–1914 ( London : Boydell and Brewer , 2015 ), 19–20 . 82 Anon., ‘Charcoal Respirators’, Mechanics Magazine (4 March 1854): 202. 83 A n o n . , Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Regulations Aff ecting the Sanitary Condition of the Army ( London : George Eyre , 1858 ), 72 . 84 Ibid., 9. See also Henry Letherby , Report to the Honorably Commission of Sewers of the City of London ( London : M. Lowndes , 1858 ), 78 . 85 J o h n D a v y , Notes and Observations on the Ionian Islands and Malta: With Some Remarks on Constantinople and Turkey… ( London : Smith and Elder , 1842 ), 424 . 86 E r a s m u s W i l s o n , Healthy Skin: A Popular Treatise on the Skin and Hair, Th eir Preservation and Management ( London : John Churchill , 1859 ), 94 . 87 Ibid., 95.

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68 Concerning Beards

noted above, stated that the ‘beard also acts benefi cially as a respirator, for it not only mechanically prevents the entrance of foreign particles into the air-passages, but it also lessens the coldness of the air we breathe, by imparting to it, as it passes through the thick moustache, some of the heat which has been left there by the warm breath just expired’. 88 Interesting to note here that temperature control was relegated to second place. Alexander Rowland noted the prevalence of moustaches in cavalry regiments, that ‘act like a respirator’. 89 Th e aptly named physician George Beard also allowed that facial hair could be a useful appendage for suff erers of hay fever, in potentially directing the ‘irritating particles’ away from the nasal passages. 90 As for specifi c published medical evidence, however, articles claiming the fi ltering properties of beards were as circumspect as those for other health claims, usually citing unnamed physicians, or the medical faculty in general. Alexander Rowland’s claims about the utility of the beard against dust inhalation were again attributed to an unnamed ‘grave professor at Edinburgh’. 91 It is indeed very hard to fi nd any specifi c medical support for, or even discussion of, the potential utility of facial hair in medical publications relating to pulmonary or respiratory conditions. Even in the 1850s and 1860s, when the popularity of beards was at its height, there is little to suggest that the medical profession necessarily advocated or prescribed facial hair as a medical expedient. 92 However, many medical authors certainly did endorse artifi cial respirators. 93 A 1857 report on ‘Sheffi eld Grinders’ disease’, authored by J. C. Hall, physician to the Sheffi eld Dispensary, noted the ‘perfect clouds’ of metal and stone dust created in grinding cutlery and razors and the resulting ‘evil’ to the workers’ health. 94 Th ese included asthma, constriction of the chest, running eyes and nose and skin conditions. Given the emphasis laid upon the usefulness of moustaches and beards to workers in dusty environments, a recommendation to wear them might have been expected. But the nearest the report came was a reference to a ‘magnet used as a mouthpiece or, as the grinders term it a “magnetic moustache” ’, which had been tried, but quickly abandoned. 95 Th e principle of attracting metal dust into the contrivance

88 A. Mercer-Adam , ‘Is Shaving Injurious to Health? A Plea for Beards by Dr. A Mercer-Adams, Late Physician to the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infi rmary ’, Edinburgh Medical Journal , 7 : 1 (December 1861 ): 539 . 89 Quoted in Oldstone-Moore, ‘Beard Movement’, 22; Rowland, Th e Human Hair , 99. 90 G e o r g e B e a r d , Hay Fever or Summer Catarrh: Its Nature and Treatment (New York : Harper Brothers, 1876 ), 182 . 91 R o w l a n d , Th e Human Hair , 99. 92 For example, no references to the utility of facial hair can be found in specifi c medical publications on pulmonary illness, where they might logically have been expected, including Samuel Sheldon Fitch , Six Lectures on the Functions of the Lungs ( London : L. H. Chandler , 1856 ) ; Francis H. Ramadge , Th e Curability of Consumption ( London : Longman, Brown, Green and Longman , 1856 ) ; J. C. Hall , Hints on the Pathology, Diagnosis, Prevention and Treatment of Th oracic Consumption ( London : Longman, Brown, Green and Longman , 1856 ) ; Th omas Bartlett , Consumption: Its Causes, Prevention and Cure (London : Hippolyte Bailliere, 1855 ) ; Henry McCormac , On the Nature, Treatment and Prevention of Pulmonary Consumption ( London : Longman, Brown, Green and Longman , 1855 ) . 93 R a m a d g e , Th e Curability of Consumption, 69; Bartlett, Consumption , 75; John Stenhouse , On Charcoal as a Disinfectant Being a Letter to the Editor of ‘Th e Times’… 22nd November 1854 (London : Publisher unknown, 1854 ), 4 . 94 J . C . H a l l , On the Prevention and Treatment of the Sheffi eld Grinders’ Disease ( L o n d o n : L o n g m a n Brown , 1857 ), 17 , 20 . 95 Ibid., 28.

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was perhaps grounded in the same idea as that put forward in popular publications. But it is noteworthy that a ‘real’ moustache was not suggested as an, aft er all cheaper and easier, alternative. Debates about the injurious eff ects of dust also carried on aft er, and despite, the rise of facial hair. In 1870 the Gentleman’s Journal published the fi ndings of Dr Tyndall’s report on the health risks of dust, in tandem with the latest ideas about germ theory. Tyndall’s experiments in the Royal Institution demonstrated the eff ectiveness of various substances as barriers to the inhalation of dust, of which the most useful was cotton wool. 96 Nowhere in the report was facial hair referred to as a useful expedient. When beard advocates cited the fi ltering properties of beards, therefore, it is likely that they were simply ‘cutting and pasting’ the claims made by the makers of respirators. In the process the original purpose of respirators in regulating temperature was side-lined in favour of more appealing claims as to the prevention of infection. As this occurred facial hair was remade as the natural alternative to the artifi cial device. Arguments for the beard played upon both the popular distrust of quack medicines, but also the false economy of paying for something that nature had provided freely. Artium Magister’s Apology for the Beard, for example, stated that while ‘Man fashions his respirator of wire, curiously wrought; Nature makes hers of hair placed where it belongs’ rendering it ‘more effi cient than the cunning hand of man’. 97 Th is created, however, a somewhat odd paradox. Moustaches and beards were claimed to fi t men to negotiate the soot and smuts of the city, the damp, dust and grime of the factory, the railway or the workshop – environments that were all entirely and inherently unnatural . If so, nature had therefore somehow anticipated the rise of the city and the factory and swift ly equipped the male body accordingly. In terms of both the medical evidence relating to beards as natural respirators and the broader skein of health claims made in support of facial hair, the remaining question is why was a popular discourse on facial hair using or ignoring scientifi c/medical writing and fi ndings to promote beard growing, particularly despite the relative lack of such evidence from actual practitioners? Establishing precisely who were the main epistolary supporters of facial hair in books and journals is oft en complicated by the fact that they concealed their identities either by writing anonymously or used esoteric pseudonyms. Th at they were medical practitioners themselves cannot be ruled out; many were clearly familiar with medical texts. But it seems clear that they were writing for a popular audience, rather than trying to convince the medical profession. In many respects the processes involved in disseminating medical ideas about facial hair resemble Th omas Laqueur’s model for understanding changing concepts of gender in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whereby the prevailing discourse was driven primarily by non-medical/scientifi c assumptions which scientifi c evidence backed up, rather than scientifi c discoveries shaping gender ideologies. 98 In other words, popular

96 Anon., ‘Professor Tyndall on Dust’, Gentleman’s Journal (1 May 1870): 7–8. 97 A r t i u m M a g i s t e r , An Apology for the Beard, Addressed to Men in General, to the Clergy in Particular (London : Rivingtons , 1862 ), 39 . 98 Th omas Laqueur , Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud ( Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press , 1992 ), 153–63 .

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70 Concerning Beards

authors fi rst shift ed the ideology of beard-wearing, loading it with a wide variety of positive attributes, then looked to medicine for provenance, however scant. Th is was particularly noticeable in questions about the fi ltering properties of facial hair, where claims relating to a new technology were fi rst appropriated then adapted, with little evidence to back them up. As they were continually and widely recycled in the public arena, they almost moved beyond doubt. Th is process raises questions (although beyond the scope of this chapter) about the spread of medical ideas and complicates the notion of top-down dissemination from elite to popular, or from ‘experts’ to the public. So far, then, this chapter has explored the interplay between facial hair and medicine and the many and various health claims made in support of beards and moustaches. Th ere was one area of nineteenth-century medico-science, however, where beards were potentially problematic. Th e popularity of physiognomy in the late nineteenth century complicated the ‘natural’ status of the beard insofar as it represented a barrier to ‘reading’ the face. It is to such debates that the fi nal part of this chapter now turns.

Physiognomy and the beard movement

Th e previous chapter noted the growing popularity of physiognomy from the late eighteenth century. Th is continued, and actually increased, through the early decades of the nineteenth century, reaching its apogee around 1850. Th e early 1800s saw the proliferation of small, cheap and accessible physiognomical texts, most notably reprints and editions of Johann Caspar Lavater’s key works. 99 According to Sharona Pearl, physiognomy became normalized in the nineteenth century, across the social spectrum, forming a ‘widely understood visual language’ and an important semiotic component in understanding the body. 100 Th e fl exibility and subjectivity of physiognomy (there was no, single, physiognomic standard) appealed to Victorian ideas of inclusivity and exclusivity. It allowed individuals to instantly measure themselves and those they encountered against broad standards of desirable or undesirable characteristics. Victorian physiognomic texts retained their interest in the shape and proportion of the head and face and facial features, all of which carried and conveyed meaning. Th e forehead and eyes – even wrinkles under the eyes – could indicate more or less favourable personality traits. 101 Th e shape and size of the nose was of principal importance in physiognomic interpretation, being viewed in one study as a ‘predaceous organ’ and a sign of ‘animal courage’. 102 Large nostrils suggested greater capacity for inhalation and, therefore, an energetic individual and so on. 103 In the nineteenth century, the lower half

99 P e a r l , About Faces , 12. 100 Ibid., 7–8. 101 J a m e s R e d fi e l d , Outlines of a New System of Physiognomy (New York: J. Redfi eld , 1849 ), 65 . Redfi eld’s study suggested that having baggy wrinkles under the eyelids was a sure indication of a ‘love of mathematical accuracy’. 102 J o h n C r o s s , An Attempt to Establish Physiognomy on Scientifi c Principles (Glasgow : Andrew and John Duncan, 1817 ), 217 . 103 Ibid., 214.

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of the face, and in particular the mouth and chin, assumed greater importance in the divination of character. According to Samuel Well’s 1871 New Physiognomy , the shape, size and movement of the mouth and lips revealed much about individual character and temperament. While coarse, irregular lips might convey strength, a small, smooth and delicate ones suggested delicacy of character. 104 Likewise, narrow, closed mouths betokened lack of aff ection and reserve, while open mouths showed a frank, outspoken disposition. 105 If faces were increasingly to be read, then, the mid-century resurgence of beards created inconvenient problems for physiognomists, complicating the process and adding a note of discord to the otherwise overwhelming support for facial hair. One solution was to bypass the problem altogether by arguing that, since they were entirely under the control of the wearer, ‘whiskers and beards do not, properly speaking, fall under the head of physiognomical features’ and were useless as indicators of character. 106 Others took a diff erent tack and simply denounced the whole premise of pseudosciences like physiognomy and phrenology, much less the potential of a beard to determine a man’s worth. For the vehement anti-phrenologist John Wayte, the beard was of no more use than a bird’s plumage in adjudging character and was merely a ‘badge of distinction between the sexes’, and to suggest otherwise was an ‘aff ront to God’. 107 For devotees of the new science, though, beards were an awkward barrier, since they obscured the whole lower portion of the face. 108 How were dilettante physiognomists to practice their art if the very subject of their study was concealed? Th is played directly into fears about concealment and deception. Th e extent to which facial hair altered a man’s appearance clearly rendered it useful for those wishing to avoid detection or unwelcome attention. Its prosthetic nature also made it easy to adopt and just as easy to remove. While the disguising potential of a beard was never a specifi c argument made in its support by advocates, Victorians were going to increasing lengths to hide their faces from the intrusive gawp of strangers. 109 Sharona Pearl’s discussion of the 1874 Punch cartoon ‘At the French Play’ notes the wearing of masks to public events as a conscious act to defy observation and protect identity. 110 What is missed, however, is that while the image portrays a man wearing a mask to hide the top half of his face, the entire lower portion is also covered by a bushy beard, leaving no skin visible – an equally eff ective mask. Th e beard, then, could represent a ‘masked battery, behind which a man of weak principles or defi cient domesticity may hide’. 111 Th ere were also

104 S a m u e l R . W e l l s , New Physiognomy or Signs of Character, as Manifested through Temperament and External Forms, and Especially in the Face Divine ( New York : American Book Company , 1871 ), 8 . 105 Ibid. 106 Anon., ‘Th e Comic Physiognomist, Chapter VI, of the Whiskers and Beard’, Fun (12 December 1863): 128. 107 J o h n Wa y t e , Anti-Phrenology or Observations to Prove the Fallacy of a Modern Doctrine of the Human Mind Called PHRENOLOGY ( Lynn-Regis : Published by the author , 1829 ), 35 . 108 A point made by Alexander Stewart , Our Temperaments: Th eir Study and Th eir Teaching (London : Crosby, Lockwood, 1887 ), 122 , 236 . 109 P e a r l , About Faces , 33–4. 110 Ibid., 36. 111 M a r y O l m s t e a d S t a n t o n , A System of Practical and Scientifi c Physiognomy: or, How to Read Faces, Volume II ( Philadelphia, PA : F. A. Davis , 1890 ), 1011 .

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72 Concerning Beards

potential issues surrounding honesty and concealment. A beard eff ectively covered and disguised the face, and false beards or whiskers made perfect accessories for the criminal wishing to avoid recognition. To pick just one example from the many, among the possessions found at the house of the armed robber Th omas Caseley in 1865 were a false beard and moustache, while one of his accomplices wore ‘false whiskers’. 112 Even if not purposefully grown to deceive, a full beard fundamentally changed appearance. Physiognomists were therefore on their guard. In her System of Practical and Scientifi c Physiognomy (1890), Mary Olmstead Stanton claimed never to ‘make a delineation of an individual whose face exhibits a beard and moustache without taking pains to discover the exact size and form of both [sic ] the chin, jaws and upper lip’. 113 It was these, rather than the beard, that revealed the truth in the face and character. Some even suspected that beard wearers had something to hide. Th e author of a 1859 article in the American Medical Gazette (tellingly titled ‘Physiognomy Annihilated by Beards’) held forth on the subject. If he had only foreseen the extent to which men would once again ‘disfi gure’ their chins by growing beards, argued the author, Lavater would surely have put aside his toils. 114 ‘He whose chin, mouth and lips are rendered invisible, by neglecting the daily use of the razor, wears a mask, which conceals his character from the observer.’ 115 Th ere were attempts, however, to bring the beards fashion into the physiognomic fold. Here again, the issue of modernity is salient. Physiognomy was itself to some degree a technology of the modern, a means of negotiating and coping with an increasingly anonymous modern world. 116 Some argued that facial hair had potential for determining the character of its wearer, although the exact nature of the relationship was up for debate. James Coates’s How to Read Faces suggested that while it was ‘signifi cant of character’, the beard was one part of a broader palette of signs, rather than a marker in and of itself. 117 Even despite her initial distrust, Mary Olmstead Stanton conceded that beards could be ‘strong physiognomical signifi cators’ which stood as primary characteristics of sexual selection. 118 Her reasoning related to the behaviours exhibited by beard wearers, such as the thoughtful brushing, twisting and caressing of their ‘hairy ornaments’, all performative indicators of ‘the great mental meaning’ of beards. 119 Such gestures therefore implied an active and thoughtful mind. Supporters of the beard were quick to stress that a full beard actually enhanced, rather than inhibited, expression and character. In his discussion of physiognomy and expression, Paolo Mantegazza identifi ed hair and beards as one of the key ‘anatomical

112 Old Bailey Proceedings Online ( www.oldbaileyonline.org ; version 7.2, 8 July 2016), April 1865, trial of Th omas Brewerton, William Henry Jeff ery, Louise Brewerton, Th omas Caseley, David Roberts, Martha Jeff ery, Ann Caseley. 113 Ibid., 780. 114 Anon. , ‘Physiognomy Annihilated by Beards’, American Medical Gazette, 10 : 12 (December 1859 ): 936 . 115 Ibid. 116 P e a r l , About Faces , 14–15. 117 J a m e s C o a t e s , How to Read Faces: or, Practical Physiognomy Made Easy ( L o n d o n : W. F o u l s h a m , c. 1880), 124. 118 S t a n t o n , A System , 1009. 119 Ibid., 1010.

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and expressive elements of the human face’. 120 Th ere was also some acknowledgement of a ‘bearded physiognomy’ – a term, at times, used explicitly. Others reiterated the view that beards simply indicated ‘the masculine element or virile forces’, held their own interpretive meanings and therefore needed no defence. 121 Containing echoes of older humoral references to facial hair, one 1859 instruction manual in physiognomy and phrenology stated that an abundant beard signifi ed the so-called vital temperament, while a thin beard indicated ‘sterility, and a thinly settled upper storey, with rooms to let’. As such, the beard was ‘very signifi cant of character’. 122 Citing Sir Charles Bell’s essay on expression, Household Words also claimed that beards enhanced facial expression. Th e portentous sight of a ‘beard curling visibly with anger’ was juxtaposed against that of a smooth chin, which, according to the article, portrayed a ‘sanctimonious oiliness’, which let down the rest of the face. 123 If the beard enhanced expression, it could also convey personality traits. For R. B. Wells, thick, well-shaped beards suggested loving, sociable and companionable men, while short, wiry beards betrayed a ‘proud, peevish and unsociable’ character. 124 Again recalling earlier connotations of eff eminacy, Fowler also noted the weak voices and constitutions and diminished virility of beardless men, who ‘evince more or less strongly marked feminine traits’. 125 Still, the fact that the ‘chin might be hidden in an impenetrable thicket of beard’ complicated the observation procedure and forced the observer to focus upon other parts, such as the nose. 126 But while the issue of concealment was viewed negatively by some, for others it simply provided yet more evidence of the utility of the beard, for example to those with weak features. Household Words argued that the idea that ‘a growth of beard would cover up the face, hide the expression of the features, and give a deceitful mark of uniform sedateness to the entire population’ was erroneous. 127 Arnold Cooley similarly denied that ‘it is grievous to allow a beautiful chin to be covered by the beard’, arguing instead that wearing a beard was useful in concealing ‘the defects of an ill-formed or ungraceful chin’. 128 Its potential for disguising a weak chin was a common device in literature, particularly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In Henry Merriman’s 1888 novel Phantom Future, the character Holdsworth ‘clasp[s] his hand round his weak chin, half-hidden by a fair beard of recent growth’. 129 Th e 1885 Dictionary of National Biography described the sixteenth-century reformer John Knox as having ‘common place eyes, and a weak chin, covered by a short, pointed beard’. 130

120 Paolo Mantegazza , Physiognomy and Expression ( London : Walter Scott , 1890 ), 28 . 121 W e l l s , New Physiognomy , 292. 122 O. S. and L. N. Fowler , New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology ( New York : Fowler and Wells , 1859 ) , 56, and quoted in Anon. , ‘ Physiognomy ’, Anthropological Review , 6 : 21 ( 1868 ): 144 . 123 Anon, ‘Why Shave’, 561. 124 R . B . W e l l s , Faces We Meet, and How to Read Th em ( London : L. N. Fowler , c. 1880), 87 . 125 Ibid., 86. 126 Ibid., 185. 127 Anon, ‘Why Shave?!’, 561. 128 A r n o l d C o o l e y , Th e Toilet and Cosmetic Arts in Ancient and Modern Times (London : Printed by Robert Hardwicke , 1866 ), 343–4 . 129 H e n r y M e r r i m a n , Th e Phantom Future ( London : R. Bentley and Son , 1888 ), 124 . 130 Leslie Stephen (ed.), Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 22 ( London : Smith, Elder , 1885 ), 327 .

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74 Concerning Beards

Th e weak chin ‘clothed in a long light beard’ of the character James O’Dell in the 1876 novel A Woman Scorned was in stark contrast to his high forehead where ‘if all be true that phrenologists assert, a genius ought certainly to sit enthroned’. Instead, ‘the whole face [was] a contradiction’ no doubt complicated by the obscuring nature of the beard. 131 Again, it was down to the skill of the physiognomist to penetrate the disguise and divine the true form underneath. As the narrator in Josiah Holland’s 1876 Story of Sevenoaks commented about another character, ‘Even through Benedict’s ample beard, a good reader of the human face’ (emphasis added) would have detected the weak chin, while admiring the splendid brow, silken curls and handsome eyes above it. 132 As well as physiognomy, however, the place of the beard as a physiological characteristic of both European and non-European bodies continued to attract discussion well into the nineteenth century. As Edith Snook has noted, while skin colour has been a constant source of interest, the importance of hair as a racial characteristic remains obscure. 133 Th e same certainly applies to facial hair, still an important point of distinction in the nineteenth century, and closely enmeshed with concepts of racial diff erence. Th e human population of the New World, for example, was argued to suff er from the same general degeneracy that affl icted the animal kingdom there. A beard, or lack of it, could be taken as evidence of the comparative weakness and physical inferiority of foreign ‘others’. 134 In the early decades of the nineteenth century, climate was still a determining factor in bodily appearance, as well as character. 135 Th e author of ‘Beards’ in the Penny Magazine in 1834 viewed the ‘eff ects of climate and modes of life’ as key determinants in the thickness and quality of beard hairs. Hot and dry countries begat dark, dry, hard and thin beards, while in moist and cold climates it was likely to grow thick, light and curly. 136 Diet could also have an eff ect, with ‘poor, dry and indigestible food’ acting to make beards hard and bristly. But, more than either of these, the ‘circumstances of civilized life’ determined beard growth. 137 In other words, the ability to grow a beard was a characteristic of civilization; ‘we cannot recollect any savages that are furnished with large beards’. 138 As it had been in the eighteenth century, the manner of removing the beard was still viewed as a touchstone of development. Repeated references to the plucking of the beard by the Chinese and North American

131 E. Owens Blackburne , A Woman Scorned ( London : Tinsley Brothers , 1876 ), 198 . 132 J o s i a h H o l l a n d , Th e Story of Sevenoaks ( London : Frederick Warne , 1876 ), 130 . For other examples, s e e Th eo Gift , Lil Lorimer: A Novel ( London : Ward and Downey , 1885 ), 71 ; Irving Montagu , Wanderings of a War Artist ( London : W. H. Allen , 1889 ), 187 ; Walmer Downe , Th e Bloom of Faded Years: A Novel ( Greenock : J. Mckelvie and Sons , 1896 ), 96 . 133 Edith Snook , ‘Beautiful Hair, Health and Privilege in Early Modern England’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies , 15 : 4 ( 2015 ): 23 . 134 S i r W i l l i a m L a w r e n c e , Lectures on Physiology, Zoology and the Natural History of Man (London : Printed for J. Callow, 1819 ), 316 ; see also David Slack , An Essay on the Human Color, in Th ree Parts (Providence : J. Moore , 1845 ) . 135 Pamela K. Gilbert , ‘ Popular Beliefs and the Body: A Nation of Good Animals ’, in Michael Sappol and Stephen P. Rice (eds), A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire ( London : Bloomsbury , 2014 ), 130 . 136 A n o n . , ‘ B e a r d s ’, Th e Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diff usion of Useful Knowledge (20 September 1834 ): 367–8 . 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid., 367.

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tribes provided further evidence of their alleged lack of sophistication and ‘disrespect to the beard’. 139 Th e inconvenient fact that, in 1834, most Europeans were still removing their own beards was simply dismissed as a ‘usage rendered convenient by the habits of modern civilization’. 140 By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the body was increasingly viewed as an ‘essential biological trait’, rather than a product of its environment. 141 In contrast to pejorative depictions of the lack of beard as a sign of weakness in popular texts, medical authors sometimes played down the link and suggested in particular that, outside Europe, beard hair could not necessarily be linked to belligerence, or indeed to weakness. In his lectures on physiology and natural history, Sir William Lawrence commented on the facial hair characteristics of a wide variety of non-European races. Lawrence noted the general lack of beard among ‘dark-coloured nations’ and especially Mongolian, American and African. 142 Th e martial skill and successful civilizations of many of these races, however, militated against physical weakness. In the case of tribes of the ‘American race’, for example, their tall and robust bodies ‘proves that the absence of this excrescence [i.e. the beard] is not a sure sign of weakness’. 143 But for others the lack of facial hair correlated directly to mental and physical condition. Its presence, or lack, was therefore a common point of reference. Charles Pickering’s 1848 volume on the races of mankind contained no fewer than fi ft y-nine separate references to beards, ranging from anecdotal and observational comments, to tabulated defi nitions of racial characteristics. 144 For Charles Hamilton Smith the beard was nothing less than a defi ning characteristic, separating ‘homogenous nations of the bearded and beardless forms’. 145 Smith’s book argued for the presence of three distinct human types; ‘Caucasian’, ‘Mongolian’ and ‘Negro’ and drew on supposed ‘scientifi c’ evidence to support its claim for the superior mental acuity of Caucasian men, based on skull shape, size and proportion. Th us, ‘the highest intellectual bearded nations’ were European. Th ose of the ‘Mongolic Nations’, Laplanders and some American tribes, by contrast, were habitually referred to as of ‘beardless stock’. 146 Nonetheless, older associations still lingered. In 1852 Charles Hamilton Smith’s Natural History of the Human Species used beards as a direct means of separating races, including a diagram, diff erentiated the ‘Caucasian or Bearded Type’ from the ‘Mongolic or Beardless Type’. 147 Even twenty years later, T. S. Gowing argued that the beard was a feature of ‘all the leading races of men, whether of warm or cold climates, who have stamped their character on history’ (emphasis added). 148 Discussions

139 Ibid. 140 Ibid. 141 Gilbert, ‘Popular Beliefs’, 130. 142 Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology , 315, 317. 143 Ibid., 317. 144 Charles Pickering , Th e Races of Man and Th eir Geographical Distribution (London : John Murray , 1848 ). 145 Charles Hamilton Smith , Th e Natural History of the Human Species (Edinburgh : W. H. Lizards, 1848 ), 279 . 146 Ibid., 156, 238, 250, 283. 147 H a m i l t o n S m i t h , Th e Natural History of the Human Species ( Edinburgh : W. H. Lizards , 1852 ), 187 . 148 G o w i n g , Philosophy of Beards , 14.

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76 Concerning Beards

were also sometimes founded in much earlier connections between the beard and physical strength, rather than intellectual capacity. Th e beard was a sign of ‘Healthy, wiry, vigorous and muscular men’ and betokened positive characteristics, including ‘manliness’, virility, sexual prowess and courage. 149 By implication, these were characteristics that beardless men, or races, did not possess. Race also still continued to inform discussions of facial hair in medical dictionaries. Th e Medical Vocabulary of 1836 defi ned ‘Barba’ as ‘the hair on the chin and neighbouring parts’, but also linked the term to ‘barbarus’, defi ned as ‘savage’, and suggested that beard-wearing a mark of lower orders of humans, ‘because uncivilized nations allow their beard to grow’. 150 Th is defi nition rested on earlier examples, such as Quincy’s Lexicon Medicum (1817) where the derivation or root of ‘barba’ was again given as ‘barbarus’, since ‘wild nations are usually unshaven’. 151 Th e semantic shift from the relatively benign ‘wild’ to the more loaded ‘savage’ over the course of twenty years is striking. Th e Anatomy of the Human Body (1844) noted the utilitarian diffi culties of maintaining long beards and hair, but also pointedly remarked upon the popularity of long beards among ‘the most eff eminate nations’, in this case ‘the Orientals’. 152 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, there were signs of change. Charles Darwin discussed the beard widely in Th e Descent of Man (1871). For Darwin, the beard was a secondary sexual characteristic of the male body and one that varied widely according to location and even within specifi c tribes or families. While beards were prevalent on the ‘Europaeo-Asiatic Continent’, they largely disappeared eastwards of India. Th e Siamese, Chinese, Japanese and Malays were largely beardless, although some inhabitants of northern Japanese islands were ‘the hairiest men in the world’. 153 For Darwin, however, beard growth had little to do with skin colour. While, as he argued, ‘negroes’ had beards that were ‘scanty and wanting, and they rarely have whiskers’, the Papuans of the Malay Archipelago, ‘who are nearly as black as negroes, possess well-developed beards’. 154 Th e meanings of the beard as a sign of sexual potency varied too. Men from ‘beardless races’ studiously sought to remove every trace of facial hair, viewing it as odious, while ‘men of the bearded races feel the greatest pride in their beards’. 155 Th e eff ects of Darwinian ideas in discussions of beards were clear to see almost immediately and seems to correspond with the end of the beard as a signal of racial value. In 1873 Rev. C. Austen’s ‘Plea for Beards’ noted the capriciousness of nature in providing facial hair, speculating that ‘beardless men sprang from some extinct species of beardless monkey’. 156 In discussing the beards of diff erent continents,

149 Coates, How to Read Faces , 123. 150 A n o n . , A Medical Vocabulary or Explanation of All Names, Synonymes, Terms and Phrases, Used in Medicine, Surgery, and the Relative Branches of Medical Science (Edinburgh : John Carfrae and Son, 1836 ), 21 . 151 Robert Hooper (ed.), Quincy’s Lexicon Medicum: A New Medical Dictionary ( Philadelphia, PA : E. and R. Parker , 1817 ), 99 . 152 J . C r u v e i l h e i r , Th e Anatomy of the Human Body ( New York : Harper Brothers , 1844 ), 638 . 153 Paul H. Barrett and R. B. Freeman (eds), Th e Works of Charles Darwin, Vol. 22. Th e Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Vol. 2 ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1992 ), 557–60 . 154 Ibid., 560. 155 Ibid., 602–3. 156 Rev. S. C. Austen , ‘ A Plea for Beards, Clerical and Lay ’, Churchman’s Shilling Magazine and Family Treasury 13 (March–August 1873 ): 253 .

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Austen simply suggested that the diff erence was a quirk of nature; bearded men were proud of their ornaments, while beardless men regarded them with contempt. Neither was privileged. 157 By the end of the century too there were signs that the beard was even losing its status as a fundamental marker of manliness. In 1890, Paolo Mantegazza was explicit in his view that the beard no longer corresponded to intellectual rank. 158 For the fi rst time in nearly 50 years, the beardless man began to supplant the bearded patriarch as the exemplar of manliness. A year later in 1891, Samuel Frith’s book How to Read Character argued that beardless men had more sharpness and fi nesse, were more subtle and business-like and less sentimental than their hirsute counterparts. 159 As the new century approached, the physiognomical standard had shift ed once again.

Conclusion

As this chapter has discussed, then, the mid-nineteenth century saw the dramatic return of the beard to men’s faces, aft er 150 years of absence. Derided in the eighteenth century as markers of rough, rustic masculinity, beards were now viewed as the ultimate, natural emblem of masculinity amidst a new interest in the physicality of the male body. Underlying these changes were fears about the emasculating eff ects of industrialization, urbanization and changing gender and domestic roles. A wide variety of claims were made by advocates of beards, including the conveyance of manly attributes such as strength and courage, the place of the beard in bodily symmetry and harmony, the importance of facial hair as a marker of life stage and the broader concept of the beard as a natural, God-given characteristic of men. It was health claims, however, that garnered most attention. Th roughout the second half of the century, a wide variety of assertions were made regarding the supposed healthiness of beards and their place as a natural protector of the body. But it seems clear that such debates generally took place in the public and popular, rather than the professional, domain, with lay authors and hair practitioners proving the main sources of medical debate, oft en based on few, or even unnamed, medical sources. Perhaps surprisingly, given the centrality of health to endorsements of the ‘beard movement’, aside from a few brief references, there appears to have been little interest from the medical profession in either supporting or challenging such claims. As the chapter has also showed, claims about the potential fi ltering properties of facial hair and their accompanying health benefi ts were not based on empirical study, but instead adapted wholesale from a specifi c technological innovation, initially based on warming the air, rather than fi ltering germs. As the chapter has also discussed, however, as much as the beard provided a useful and convenient totem, it was also problematic in other areas of Victorian corporeality.

157 Ibid. 158 Mantegazza, Physiognomy , 66. 159 H e n r y F r i t h , How to Read Character in Features, Forms and Faces: A Guide to the General Outlines of Physiognomy ( London : Ward, Lock , 1891 ), 12 .

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78 Concerning Beards

Amidst the recurring interest in physiognomy, beards caused issues for those who sought to divine character by ‘reading’ facial features, since it concealed much of the face. While some attempted to reconcile the beard with these ideas by arguing that it was a signal characteristic of itself, or otherwise tried to bypass the problem entirely, the general lack of discussion of facial hair within physiognomic texts refl ects the fact that it remained an inconvenient truth. Equally, as the discussion of beards and race reveals, facial hair continued to be an important part of the classifi cation of the human species and the ranking of nations based on their physical appearance – a process that had begun in the previous century. While climate and environment continued to be important elements in the facial hair characteristics of non-European men, as did the place of beards as markers of mental and moral strength. Here again, however, there were complexities. A lack of beard among non-Europeans could betoken anything from want of intelligence to a lack of sexual potency and eff eminacy. Here, bearded Europeans could claim superiority. But in other readings of facial hair, it was long beards that could imply barbarism, lack of control and even eff eminacy. Much apparently depended on the method of removing facial hair. Towards the end of the century, such perceptions had begun to change, and the beard, or lack of it, gradually but fi nally lost its connections to supposedly innate characteristics. Th e end of the nineteenth century, therefore, fi nally brought to an end a view of facial hair that had predominated for over two hundred years.

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